


Shadows in Daylight

by goodisrelative



Category: Criminal Minds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-27
Updated: 2009-12-27
Packaged: 2017-10-05 08:42:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/39829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goodisrelative/pseuds/goodisrelative
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em> Even if the brain bleach worked, she knows it can't bring back the pieces of her soul she's losing every day to every picture, every video, every recorded conversation she analyzes.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shadows in Daylight

**Criminal Minds Fanfic: Shadows in Daylight (PG)**

DISCLAIMER: Criminal Minds and it's characters belong to CBS and their creators. This is not for profit and I am recognizing no financial gain from this enterprise.

Title: Shadows in Daylight  
Author: [](http://goodisrelative.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://goodisrelative.livejournal.com/)**goodisrelative**  
Rating: PG  
Spoilers: The Perfect Storm  
Summary: _ Even if the brain bleach worked, she knows it can't bring back the pieces of her soul she's losing every day to every picture, every video, every recorded conversation she analyzes._  
Disclaimer: CBS and the producers own Criminal Minds… this is purely for entertainment purposes.  
Credit: Thanks to [](http://pixie-on-acid.livejournal.com/profile)[**pixie_on_acid**](http://pixie-on-acid.livejournal.com/) and Beta 1 ([](http://thekatebeyond.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://thekatebeyond.livejournal.com/)**thekatebeyond**) for the Beta. You both rock as always! Thanks for telling me that what I had worked… and was in Garcia's voice.

A/N: This story was spawned from the end of the episode "The Perfect Storm". The ending scenes with Garcia stuck with me until this was written.  


* * *

 

She wishes she had a vat of brain bleach she could store in her office… that and a flip-top head. Because cases like this make her want to soak her brain so she can forget.

She sighs, because she knows it doesn't matter. Even if she didn't have the videos on repeat in her head, it would be something else flashing through her mind's eye – pictures of torture only man can inflict. Even if the brain bleach worked, she knows it can't bring back the pieces of her soul she's losing every day to every picture, every video, every recorded conversation she analyzes.

She can feel the shadow growing every time she works on a new case for the BAU. Every case serves to demonstrate just how depraved humans can be. The quote by Mark Twain Gideon once told her is correct... _Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it._ If she was one to think in terms of auras, she knows hers is blacker, duller, less vibrant than it was before she started here.

She wonders what happens when the shadow becomes all she is. When the once vibrant, swirling colors that her friends always tell her they see turn a silent grey-black, does that mean she becomes the sickness she sees daily? Or is she absorbing the evil, mutating it with her colors so no one else can be hurt by it?

Will she still be Penelope Garcia, computer genius, the miracle-working Oracle of Quantico and head of the Office of Supreme Genius? Or will she be someone else in the end? She already sees changes and she's scared that one day she'll see her image reflected on a computer screen and she won't recognize the woman staring back at her.

* * *

 

It's Gideon she turns to three sleepless nights later. She won't ask Morgan because she can't worry him and she needs their flirting banter – too often that is what gets her through her day.

She wonders idly, as she waits for Gideon to get off the phone, if any of them can see that she didn't originally belong here. She's not prepared like they are, with their degrees in psychology and all their training. She won't leave; training or no, she's here to stay because they need her – the team and the ones they search for. She just has to find a way to deal with this.

He's off the phone and she's babbling and hesitant as she closes his office door. She knows it, hears it, but can't stop. Gideon makes her nervous and she hasn't got a clue what she needs or how to ask for it.

Finally she just blurts, "How do you stop them? The images? The darkness eating you?" And for once the fun-loving, bubbling personality is gone and her eyes reflect her darkened mind, just like the bags under her eyes that no amount of make-up can fully hide reflect her sleepless nights.

He watches her chatter nervously, and she can tell the moment Gideon realizes the truth – she never signed up for this. Sometimes it's like they forget that there are innocents in this world, ones who were never victims of a violent act. The computer whiz they all see _is_ a victim, or maybe a better word for it is casualty, of the BAU. She sees things she never imagined before she came to this unit. Yet she stays, doing all she can to help them all.

"Why do you stay?" he asks instead of answering. He needs more facts for a profile.

Garcia sighs. She knows easy answers and platitudes aren't available from Gideon. It's another reason she comes to him. "Because you need me. Because they need me."

Her answer is as simple as it is complex, and revealing. Garcia is smart enough to know that Gideon understands her "you" translates to the team and that her "they" translates to the victims they search for. She doesn't realize it, but it's interesting to him that she puts the team first.

"Nietzsche said _He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby becomes a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes into you._ He's right." He takes off his glasses and rubs the bridge of his nose, a move so patently Gideon, and Garcia smiles. "If the day comes that what you see doesn't eat you, haunt you, it's time you stop. You have ways to deal – the back and forth banter you trade with Morgan. The death glares you send me and others behind our backs when we disrupt the order of your sanctuary."

Garcia bites her lip at that. She's never realized he disturbs her space on purpose.

Gideon smiles at her. He's not as oblivious as he sometimes seems.

"But those are not always enough." Gideon doesn't hide the truth. He gestures to the desk of photos behind her. "Those are the ones we've saved over the years. I remember their happiness at going home, at being saved. Some write once a year or so, keeping me updated on their lives, lives they have because of us. The knowledge of the good we do helps. It's just sometimes remembering the good we do - the closure and rarely, the joy, we bring to the families we help - is hard in the face of the evil we see in the pictures, videos, and humanity."

He catches her eye. "There is no training that can help you learn to deal with this. Maybe working up from normal crime to the BAU makes it easier, helps in some ways, but it doesn't prepare you for this – the level of evil we see every day. There isn't anything that can prepare you for those DVDs. Anyone who tells you different is lying to you and himself. Everyone has their own way to deal with and hold back the evil that haunts. You can't vanquish it. Albert Einstein proved the conservation of energy theory of physics, E=mc2. It states that in an isolated system, energy may change forms, but the total always remains constant. Evil is the same. It changes forms, but always remains. We move it from one person to another, taking it into ourselves when we stop an UnSub, but the total amount of evil in the world remains constant." Gideon takes a breath and Garcia frowns at the apparent hopelessness of his words. "They've all reached this point, Penelope. You need to find a way that works for you. The team, myself, we are here if you even need to talk about it, but you need to find your own way. And luckily, it's not a perfect system in isolation, this world we live in. Sometimes we win and shift the balance slightly to the good." He's silent for a few minutes, his gaze sliding back to the pictures behind her.

"The mind is amazing for all it can do and absorb. You'll find your way. That you asked tells me that," he concludes.

Garcia offers him a small smile. She believes Gideon. If he thinks she'll work through it, she knows she can. "Thanks," is all she offers as she heads to the door. She turns around at it. "Next time you bring food into my office, I will toss it." And she's Garcia again, smiling and happy. Maybe her eyes are a touch less bright than they were a year ago, but they are brighter that yesterday.

"Hey, gorgeous!" Morgan calls to her.

"What's up, sweet cheeks?" She can't help but grin at Morgan.

"We're heading out for a beer. You coming?"

"Darlin', there's no place else I'd rather be tonight." She grabs her bag from her office and joins them a moment later. She's up for postponing the darkness just a little bit longer tonight.


End file.
